ple of his guns had been
dragged up the steep gradient, were unlimbered, and served by the
officers themselves.

It was the fire of this artillery that relieved the Royal Picts of
their most serious apprehensions. It tided them over the last critical
phase of the hotly-contested action, and completed the discomfiture of
the enemy on this side.

Matters had gone no less prosperously on the left. The renewed attack
of the Light Division, supported by the Guards, had ended in the
capture of the great redoubt; while Sir Colin Campbell, a veteran
warrior, at the head of his "bare-legged savages," as they were
christened by their affrighted foe, had made himself master of the
Kourgane Hill.

CHAPTER XI.

AFTER THE BATTLE.

The Battle of the Alma was won! Three short hours had sufficed to
finish it, and by four o'clock the enemy was in full retreat. It was a
flight rather than a retreat--a headlong, ignominious stampede, in
which the fugitives cast aside their arms, accoutrements, knapsacks,
everything that could hinder them as they ran. Pursuit, if promptly
and vigorously carried out, would assuredly have cost them dear. But
the allies were short of cavalry; the British, greatly weakened by
their losses in this hard-fought field, could spare no fresh troops to
follow; the French, although they had scarcely suffered, and had a
large force available, would do nothing more; St. Arnaud declared
pursuit impossible, and this, the first fatal error in the campaign,
allowed the beaten general to draw off his shattered battalions.

But, if the allied leaders rejected the more abiding and substantial
fruits of victory, they did not disdain the intoxicating but empty
glories of an ovation from their troops. The generals were everywhere
received with loud acclaims.

Deafening cheers greeted Lord Raglan as he rode slowly down the line.
The cry was taken up by battalion after battalion, and went echoing
along--the splendid, hearty applause of men who were glorifying their
own achievements as well.

There was joy on the face of every man who had come out of the fight
unscathed--the keen satisfaction of success, gloriously but hardly
earned. Warm greetings were interchanged by all who met and talked
together. Thus Lord Raglan and Sir Colin Campbell, both Peninsular
veterans, shook hands in memory of comradeship on earlier fields. Few
indeed had thus fought together before; but none were less cordial in
their expressions o